This invention relates generally to beverage or liquid service articles. More specifically it relates to insulated containers and trays for serving beverages.
Very frequently it is desired to serve beverages in a wide variety of institutions such as schools or hospitals or in other public or quasi public places such as airplanes, meeting halls and the like. Very frequently it is desirable to prepare the beverages ahead of time and to place them in individual containers so that at the time of actual service it can be done rapidly and efficiently. However, under such circumstances it is considered desirable that the beverage at the time of actual service be at or near an optimum service temperature. That is to say, that hot liquids be hot and cold liquids be cold. It is usually difficult to achieve these objectives without providing means for heating or cooling at the point of service. Yet such means require a source of energy connected to a serving device such as a coffee urn. Alternatively, an insulated bulk container may be used and individual servings drawn from the container through a tap or spigot. These kinds of serving means increase the service time required and usually necessitate the presence of a serving person, thus adding to the labor cost.
In institutions the latter situation is sometimes aggravated because the beverage to be served could very easily be prepared during the work period in the normal course of the day, but if bulk service is used very frequently additional people are required if the actual service is to occur late in the evening, as is often the case in hospitals.
To obviate the foregoing deficiencies it is an object of this invention to provide a novel beverage serving system wherein individual portions of a beverage may be prepared a considerable time before they are intended to be served and held at a desired serving temperature until individual service is actually made.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a novel beverage service system which permits the economical and compact storage of beverage service devices until they are required to be used.
It is a still further object of this invention to provide novel beverage service devices which may be easily transported and handled by a person making the beverage service.
Another object of this invention is to provide novel beverage service devices which may be used to hold beverages of different temperatures for relatively long periods of time at their desired serving temperatures.